REVISIT: Thorbjørn Lausten

With the exhibition format REVISIT, Overgaden delves into its own history for the third year running. This year the focus is Thorbjørn Lausten’s 2003 exhibition Datablik (Dataview) and his long-standing, pioneering work at the intersection of art, science and technology.

The exhibition format REVISIT is an annual event focusing on some of the significant art projects held at Overgaden in the past. In 2015 we revisit Thorbjørn Lausten’s 2003 exhibition Datablik and, in a two-storey solo exhibition, offer a survey of his enduring yet wide-ranging investigation of the ways and means used to communicate scientific data.

Thorbjørn Lausten was one of the first artists in Denmark to include scientific conditions and methods in his work, which also mirrors the technological developments of recent decades. Since the 1970s, he has used a wide range of media to explore the possibilities of creating sensory forms for concepts and invisible phenomena like time, radiation and other forms of energy that are crucial to our existence, yet which we can only imagine. In this context, the technical tools available to us are essential in our understanding of ourselves and the world surrounding us, but as Lausten makes clear, they also contribute to reality as we see it.

This is the pivotal point of REVISIT 2015, in which Lausten also presents his new work POL (POLE), based on extensive geomagnetic measurements at the North and South Pole. This data is transmitted live to Overgaden throughout the entire exhibition period, where it is converted into colourful, abstract compositions projected on the front of and inside the building. Key here and in the other works selected for the exhibition—which range from paintings and drawings, to light installations and web projects—is that identical data can take many different forms.

Thorbjørn Lausten’s point is that what we usually consider to be scientifically objective registrations are actually based on subjective choices, and that our perception of reality is therefore a construction conditional on the data we are presented with. The exhibition uses this basic premise to pose more fundamental philosophical questions about the mechanisms behind image formation and communication, as well as the dynamics of sensory perception, realisation and the generation of meaning—questions that have not become less pertinent in our contemporary digitalised world.

Thorbjørn Lausten (b. 1945) is a self-taught artist. He has exhibited extensively in Denmark and abroad, including solo exhibitions at KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg (2008), The Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde (2008), Esbjerg Art Museum (2005), ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2005), Museum Ostwall, Dortmund (1998), ARKEN Museum of Modern Art (1997) and the National Gallery of Denmark (1991). His public commissions include works for the Danish University and Building Agency (2007), Herning City Council (2004) and Sorø Power Plant (1994).

The exhibition is supported by: the Danish Arts Foundation, Grosserer L. F. Foghts Fond, Ernst B. Sund Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond.